Turnabout Is Fair Play
by Lucillia
Summary: It was as if the Muggle and Wizarding Worlds were playing Musical Doorsteps with the Boy-Who-Lived, abandoning him on the front porches of homes where he would not be wanted.
1. Snape's Doorstep Discovery

Petunia Dursley scowled as she looked down at the three year old boy that struggled to follow her. She hadn't been back in the old neighborhood since her mother's funeral. All her life she had longed to be away from this place, and to move on to bigger and better things. While her parents weren't wealthy, they had been able to provide a rather small but comfortable home, proper if somewhat cheap clothing, and good food to eat. There had barely been enough for extras, but every year there was at least one present under the tree for her and Lily each. Lily's Hogwarts tuition and supplies had all been paid for by a charity set up for muggleborns, had it not been so, the family would've gone broke trying to pay for it all.

When Petunia had moved on, it had been to an abusive husband and a spoiled screaming toddler with an unasked for child thrown into the mix. At least she had gotten the large house with fine furniture and the shiny new car she had longed for. Lily who was best loved by all had gotten the loving husband and an early grave, leaving behind the small child that was trailing behind Petunia like a lost puppy.

Petunia, who resented what the unasked for child had done to the shaky harmony in her formerly peaceful household, didn't hate her nephew. Far from it in fact. What she was doing right now, she was doing out of love. Love for Lily, and love for the small bruised and tired boy that was following her. Vernon had crossed the line last night, and if she didn't do this there was a chance that the child wouldn't see his fourth birthday.

When her husband had gone out to the pub after punishing little Harry for some imagined slight, Petunia swiftly grabbed her purse, hustled Dudley over to Mrs. Figg's, and set out on a journey to the town she had once called home using a cab and the train since Vernon had taken the car. Now, so late that it was early in the morning, Petunia walked the streets she had played on as a child.

Instead of turning down the lane that the house that had been her home was on, she turned down a lane lined with houses that were in poorer shape than the ones that lined the street she had previously been walking down. Eventually, she reached the street she had been looking for. Turning down Spinner's End, she began to search for the house her sister had often gone to looking for that horrid boy who had introduced her to the world that killed her.

Finding the correct house, she noted happily that it showed signs of habitation. Namely the smoke curling up from the chimney and the flickering firelight she could see in one of the windows. If the place had been abandoned like most of the rest of the houses on the street, she didn't know what she would've done.

The wizards had abandoned Harry on her doorstep without so much as a by your leave, and turnabout was fair play. The Snape boy was the only wizard she knew that she had an address for, and besides he had loved Lily...

After carefully pinning the note to Harry's over-sized shirt, she used a bit of cord to tie Harry's hand to a bit of nearby railing so he wouldn't wander off before the house's inhabitant found him. With a sigh and a shake of her head, she turned and walked away without looking back; her mind on what Vernon would do to her when he discovered that she had left, and left his precious tyke with a baby sitter.

--&--

Severus Snape awoke with a start at dawn. He carefully straightened the pages of the book he had been reading before he had fallen asleep and placed it back on the shelf. In his peripheral vision he spotted a bit of movement outside his window. He swiftly drew his wand and apparated out to his front lawn hoping to catch his would-be attacker by surprise. Instead, he was the one to be surprised. Tied to the railing of his small front porch was a small black haired boy who was sound asleep.

He quietly crept up to the boy hoping not to wake him. When he got near, he carefully unpinned the note that had been stuck to the boy's shirt with a wickedly sharp hatpin and proceeded to read it. Once done he viciously crumpled it up and hurled it into the sickly bush that grew next to his front door. He then untied the messy haired boy, picked him up astonished at how light he was, and carried him into the house. There was nothing he could do about the situation at the moment, since Dumbledore would be gone until next week, but for now he would see to getting the child some breakfast and a sorely needed bath.


	2. Up to Dumbledore

Watching a three year old during the last week of the Winter Holidays was something of a nightmare. While the boy who miraculously didn't get hypothermia or frostbite despite being forced to stay out in the cold for however many hours it had been between the time Petunia had abandoned him and he had discovered him was better behaved than most small children his age, the fact of the matter was he still needed constant supervision amongst other things.

Every time he started to yell at the mini Potter for the latest disaster he accidentally caused, Snape had been taken aback to find himself looking into Lily's eyes.

He was almost willing to care for his beloved Lily's child out of his guilt over causing her death, but the fact of the matter was he had neither the time nor the patience to raise a child properly.

Until the holidays were over and he returned to Hogwarts however, he would care for the child and pray that it didn't destroy his home.

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At the end of the week, Severus Snape and Harry Potter - who was in better condition than he had been when Snape found him - arrived at Hogwarts. After a brief stop at his office, Snape carried the child up to the Headmaster's office, put a temporary sticking charm on the backside of the child's robes (which had been a spare set of his that he had shrunk to fit) and sat him down in front of the Gargoyle that guarded the entrance.

An hour later, Professor McGonagal - who was bringing up some last minute business before the students arrived for the new term - found a very small child that much to her astonishment was Harry Potter. Affixed to the robes he was wearing was a Muggle Post-It note with the words "This was found on my doorstep." scrawled on it.


	3. Back to Petunia

Albus Dumbledore, keeping to the agreement he had made with Mrs. Dursley as much as possible despite the fact that she hadn't upheld her end of the bargain, placed a warming charm on the toddler he held in his arms before he set the child in the conditional age-line that he had drawn on the front porch of the Dursley home and disapparated. He considered going inside to have some words with the woman, but decided the note he had left with the boy this time would be enough of a warning.

If there was another incident like this however, he wouldn't be nearly as lenient.

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Petunia Dursley went outside to get the milk, and once again found her nephew on her doorstep. Vernon wasn't going to like this, he wasn't going to like this at all.

Tossing the note that had been left on the porch with the boy in the trash, she went to hide him in the cupboard until Vernon left for work.


	4. On to the Werewolf

Petunia had been desperate when she went leafing through Lily's things. She shouldn't have kept them, but she could never throw them out. Hoping to find an address amongst her sister's correspondence that actually had a street number, and despairing that she never would she actually cried in relief when she found one.

Knowing that she had to have Harry gone and be back home with dinner ready by the time Vernon got home from work, she swiftly penned a desperate note to a man she didn't know from Adam and once again put her life in her hands by dropping Dudley off at Mrs. Figgs before racing to catch a train to London.

The apartment complex that she was going to leave Harry at wasn't in the best part of town, but it looked slightly better than Spinners End.

Using a bit of yarn, she tied Harry to the doorknob of the correct apartment and prayed that Lily's friend still lived there as she raced for the bus.

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When Remus Lupin got home from work, he was completely exhausted and ill equipped to deal with what he found on his doorstep.

Finding a toddler with a note written on muggle paper safety-pinned to the front of a set of slightly ratty black robes tied to his doorknob had been a rather nasty shock.

It had only been the fact that the child had belonged to the best friend he had ever had that kept him from calling the police and leaving them to deal with it.


	5. Over to the Longbottoms

Remus Lupin knew that however much he wanted to, he could not keep James' child. It wasn't just the fact that he was a Werewolf, but being a Werewolf was at the root of all of the other problems that prevented him from raising the boy. The fact remained that he could barely feed and clothe himself, and at times that was only because he got the occasional free meal from a church and had rooted through the charity box at the Ministry as keeping a roof over his head had been top priority. There was no way he would allow the boy to go hungry as he often had to, it would be completely unfair to him.

Knowing that returning the boy to Petunia was a bad idea, he mentally reviewed the list of secondary choices for guardian that James and Lily had made prior to their deaths. All of the other people on the list were either dead or incapacitated. However, Frank and Alice did have a living relative that was taking care of a child Harry's age already if he remembered correctly.

Making up his mind, he wrote a letter to Madam Longbottom. Realizing that he could not leave the boy unsupervised while he was at work, that he couldn't bring the child to work, and that he couldn't miss any more work if he wanted to eat he stuck the letter to the front of Harry's robes and apparated to the edge of the wards outside the Longbottom ancestral home. He set up a small "Playpen" charm that would keep the boy in a fixed area just outside of the wards, put his foot over the edge of the wards to signal that someone wanted permission to enter the Longbottom property (basically the equivalent of ringing the doorbell in the Muggle world), and apparated to work.

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When Augusta Longbottom went out to greet her early-morning visitor, she was less than pleased to discover that someone had abandoned a child near her property and called for a house-elf to tend to the boy.


	6. Off to the Weasleys

While Augusta Longbottom was flattered that someone thought her qualified enough to care for the Boy-Who-Lived, the fact remained that little Neville was more than a handful already and two rambunctious little boys would be more than she could deal with.

Then there was the fact that Neville was afraid of strangers, if she kept Harry Potter there would be lots of strangers coming at all hours demanding to see the boy. This could of course end up permanently scarring poor Neville, who had already experienced enough trauma already in his short life.

Sighing as she mentally reviewed the list of acceptable families that could care for the Boy-Who-Lived, she reflected sadly that the number of families had diminished greatly thanks to the most recent war.

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Probably nobody could be more surprised than Molly Weasley was when she found Augusta Longbottom on her front porch with Harry Potter in tow.


	7. Around to the Tonks'

Molly Weasley looked sadly at the small toddler seated across from her at the breakfast table. Dumbledore would be picking him up to return him to the relatives who had gotten him in this mess soon. If she had been related to the boy by something other than marriage she would have claimed him in an instant despite the fact that eight was not the same as seven as Augusta Longbottom seemed to believe and that Arthur had given in to Dumlbledore's demand that he be handed over. Poor Arthur who had argued that he could claim a blood tie as was related to Harry through his mother Cedrella who was the boy's paternal grandmother Dorea's first cousin. Dumbledore's arguement that anyone with ties to the Black family could make a similar claim and that the Malfoys could claim closer kinship through Narcissa who was Dorea's brother's granddaughter cowed Arthur in the end.

Devastated at the loss of the child he had started to consider a seventh son in the few short days he had been in their care, Arthur had already said his goodbyes to the boy and headed to work early.

Determined not to let the boy go back to people who had already proven they couldn't care for him, Molly started leafing through all of the family charts she could find. She found the solution to her problem surprisingly enough on the Black family chart, right next to Narcissa Malfoy.

After ushering all of the kids minus Bill (who was at Hogwarts) over to the Lovegoods since Mrs. Lovegood had agreed to look after them for the afternoon, she apparated to a home that she had taken Bill and Charlie to for some playdates a few years earlier.

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After listening to Molly's story, Andromeda called her husband home telling him it was urgent. Ted Tonks listened as Molly Weasley repeated her story after he had arrived in a rush fearing that little Nymphadora was bleeding to death somewhere and had been informed that she was perfectly fine and something else was the matter.

"It's a good thing Evans is such a common surname." Ted said when she was finished.

"Why?" Molly asked.

"Considering the facts that my maternal grandmother was an Evans and that quite a lot of muggle records were lost or destroyed over the course of two World Wars, nobody is going to be able to prove that I'm not related to Lily Potter." Ted said.

And with that, Harry found a new home. Thanks to the support of an Albus Dumbledore who was frankly so relieved that another relative of Lily's had turned up that he didn't check the claim as thoroughly as he should have (after all what were the odds of a muggleborn witch and wizard being unrelated when they both had family with the same surname) Lucius Malfoy's petition for custody was summarily dismissed. Fortunately for Harry, the Tonks' had taken him in because they actually cared about him rather than the fame and fortune they could receive for being his guardians.

Harry ended up having a much happier life than the one he would have had with the Dursleys, and Petunia who started Harry on his path towards his new family eventually got away from Vernon.


End file.
